to: implement the Ballast Water Convention and regulate the ballast water and sediment of certain vessels in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to manage the risk of invasive marine pests entering Australian waters; alter and standardise the type of legislative instruments that set out matters and exceptions relating to ballast water discharge in Australian seas; broaden the existing power to destroy exotic vectors of human diseases of concern on vessels and aircraft arriving in Australia; and reinstate a previous power from the superseded

Quarantine Act 1908

for human health officials to direct a private property to undertake control activities if an exotic vector incursion is detected.

to: provide that recipients of Farm Household Allowance (FHA) are not required to serve an ordinary waiting period or liquid assets waiting period (if applicable) before they can commence receiving the FHA; broaden the meaning of a ‘farm asset’ to include any asset which is used or held wholly or mainly for the purpose of a farm enterprise; specify water entitlement rights as a newly included class of farm asset; provide for the minster to make rules to exclude certain kinds of asset from the definition of a farm asset; and define the meaning of ‘water entitlement right’.

Amends the Basin Plan 2012 to provide for a second notification of sustainable diversion limit adjustment measures by 30 June 2017 to enable basin jurisdictions to develop and notify new projects to augment the first package of measures notified on 5 May 2016 by the Basin Officials Committee to the Murray-Darling Basin Authority.

to: amend section 18C, which prohibits offensive behaviour based on racial hatred, to replace the words ‘offend’, ‘insult’ and ‘humiliate’ with ‘harass’ (resulting in the formulation ‘harass or intimidate’); and provide that an assessment of whether an act is reasonably likely to harass or intimidate a person or group of persons is made against the standard of a reasonable member of the Australian community;

Australian Human Rights Commission Act 1986

to: replace the defined term of ‘alleged unlawful discrimination’ with ‘alleged acts, omissions or practices’; repeal the requirement for the President and commissioners to act in a way that promotes the collegiate nature of the Australian Human Rights Commission; provide that certain powers to report to the minister must be exercised by the President; expressly provide that the President is responsible for managing the administrative affairs, and is the accountable authority, of the commission; remove mandatory requirements to report to the minister on certain matters and replace them with discretionary reporting powers; provide that the President cannot delegate certain powers; introduce new grounds on which the commission or the President may or must close inquiries or terminate complaints; require the commission to act fairly in the performance of its inquiry functions; increase the threshold for lodging complaints; require the President to consider whether a complaint should be terminated on certain grounds before starting to inquire into the complaint; require the President to act fairly in his or her handling of complaints; allow the President to terminate complaints lodged more than six months after the alleged unlawful discrimination; require the inclusion of a note about the costs jurisdiction of the Federal Court (FC) and the Federal Circuit Court (FCC) in a notice of termination; prescribe procedures for voluntary conciliation conferences; and provide that applications may be made to the FC or FCC in relation to complaints terminated on certain grounds; and

Native Title Act 1993

to replace the mandatory requirement for the Social Justice Commissioner to provide an annual report to the minister with a discretion to report when he or she sees fit.

to: extend the minimum duration of personal property securities (PPS) leases from more than one year to more than two years; and provide that leases of an indefinite term will not be deemed to be PPS leases unless and until they run for a period of more than two years.

to: increase the amount of the Commonwealth penalty unit from $180 to $210 from 1 July 2017; delay the first automatic Consumer Price Index (CPI) adjustment of the penalty unit until 1 July 2020; and provide for CPI indexation to occur on 1 July every three years thereafter.

[2017] FCAFC 10 by: confirming the legal status and enforceability of agreements which have been registered by the Native Title Registrar on the Register of Indigenous Land Use Agreements without the signature of all members of a registered native title claimant (RNTC); enable the registration of agreements which have been made but have not yet been registered; and ensure that area Indigenous Land Use Agreements can be registered without requiring every member of the RNTC to be a party to the agreement.